Modeling of Temperature Time-Lag Effect for Concrete Box-Girder Bridges

Abstract

It is common to assume the relationship between temperature and temperature response is instantaneous in bridge health monitoring systems. However, a time-lag effect between temperature and thermal strain response has been documented by the analysis of monitored field data of concrete box-girder s. This effect is clearly reflected by the ring feature in the temperature-strain correlation curve. Inevitably, the time-lag effect has an adverse impact on the accuracy and reliability of state assessment and real-time warning for structural health monitoring (SHM) systems. To mitigate the influence of the time-lag effect, a phase-shifting method is proposed based on the Fourier series expansion fitting method. The time-domain signal is firstly converted into the frequency domain signal to compute the phase difference between temperature data and response strain data at each decomposed order. Subsequently, the total phase difference can be obtained by weighted summation. The signal processing effectively reduces the hysteresis loop area and enhances the correlation between the structural response data and the temperature data. When processing the daily data in different seasons, it is found that after subtraction by the proposed method, the linear feature becomes dominant in the relationship between temperature and the strain during long-term observation.